


answer_key

by Katharos



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-16
Updated: 2006-09-16
Packaged: 2018-11-11 09:07:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11145315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katharos/pseuds/Katharos





	answer_key

### CROSSING THE BAR

by [](http://katharos-8.livejournal.com/profile)[**katharos_8**](http://katharos-8.livejournal.com/)

_Twilight and evening bell,_  
And after that the dark!  
And may there be no sadness of farewell,  
When I embark;" 

 

His world is bounded by the four corners of the hospital bed, by the four corners of the hospital room, by the lines that meet to make those corners but which do not carry on beyond them, do not continue on and grow but which turn in on themselves, in on this small, single square, feeding on each other, chasing round and round the boundaries they create, never ceasing. A very small eternity.

He places a stone, that first stone, down upon the board that isn't there for the last, the first, for all the times with a hand he cannot move, with fingers from which all grace and power have been robbed. His son had placed a stone in his hand on his last visit, pressed it into the hollow of his palm, curled his fingers about it to hold it there, Akira's own hands tight about his hand to hold them in place in turn. He had stared down at them, Akira's so young and strong wrapped about his own, wrinkled and suddenly weak. He cannot feel the weight of the stone. When Akira takes his strength away his hand unravels, the stone falls to bounce along the floor, once, twice, skidding along the polished hospital floor, like any stone plucked from a roadside by careless hands. They had both watched it fall. When Akira looked up dismay had welled to fill the empty places beneath the calm mask he struggled to maintain, beneath the serenity and acceptance he struggled to offer as a gift, and Kouya could see a world falling away behind his son's eyes.

His voice slurs when he speaks, precise syllables collapsing and merging into each other, but speech has never been the language of choice between them.

"Then you must place the stones."

They play.

 _Defeat me,_ he urges silently, _Defeat me, Akira!_ as they play game after game and Akira's eyes firm and sharpen, looking past the weakness of his body into the depths of his go, where his strength curls and coils still.

 _Rise above me!_ he demands. _Let me see the universes you will create as a mortal does, with perfect awe and wonder._

His wife doesn't understand. "It's still Go between you two, even now," she says, her familiar smile of tolerant amusement quiet and painful. They have never understood the other but the understanding of them, together, is the firm and quiet ground on which they rest in the other's presence. He wishes that he had something he could offer her as he does Akira, to draw her eyes away from the lines that pain and illness have left on his face, from the slack uselessness of his paralysed side, but her eyes see all of him, as they always have, and even if he had it to offer he doesn't think she'd take it.

She brought him tea as he sat before a Go board under a crescent moon, a single stone and an open place an invitation, a plea, a demand. He places his stone now, the stone that hands cannot hold, and looks outward into darkness for his answer.

He has compassed the world in his age, and his students number in their hundreds. He has sought his opponent whose face he never saw, his rival in the darkness, and found him in every one of them, and in none.

Time is measured out by the persistent, false-apologetic beeps of the machines and monitors that surround him, slicing life up into seconds, a clock that can only stop. But a game can only end. The stones placed, the striving against the rival, the world charted out in black and white and building, building to the end which is the pinnacle, when all the territories are claimed and they rest together, creating each other anew in stillness after strife.

Yet, although a game can only end, every game he has ever played still lives in his go, and in the go of everyone he has ever played, and in everyone they have played too. His world is now bounded by the lines of the hospital room, as his life has been bounded by the grid of 19x19 lines, but when has go ever made him small?

Touya Kouya sets his stone out into darkness and looks to his answer.

 _And tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place,_  
the flood may bear me far,  
I hope to see my Pilot face to face  
When I have crost the bar.

\--- Alfred Lord Tennyson


End file.
